*You will need more than this recommended capacity if you plan on adding many of the marketplace items from Azure.

Data disk drive configuration: All data drives must be of the same type (all SAS or all SATA) and capacity. If SAS disk drives are used, the disk drives must be attached via a single path (no MPIO, multi-path support is provided).

HBA configuration options

(Preferred) Simple HBA

RAID HBA – Adapter must be configured in “pass through” mode

RAID HBA – Disks should be configured as Single-Disk, RAID-0

Supported bus and media type combinations

SATA HDD

SAS HDD

RAID HDD

RAID SSD (If the media type is unspecified/unknown*)

SATA SSD + SATA HDD

SAS SSD + SAS HDD

* RAID controllers without pass-through capability can’t recognize the media type. Such controllers will mark both HDD and SSD as Unspecified. In that case, the SSD will be used as persistent storage instead of caching devices. Therefore, you can deploy the development kit on those SSDs.

Operating system

Requirements

OS Version

Windows Server 2012 R2 or later. The operating system version isn’t critical before the deployment starts, as you'll boot the host computer into the VHD that's included in the Azure Stack installation. The OS and all required patches are already integrated into the image. Don’t use any keys to activate any Windows Server instances used in the development kit.

Deployment requirements check tool

Account requirements

Typically, you deploy the development kit with internet connectivity, where you can connect to Microsoft Azure. In this case, you must configure an Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) account to deploy the development kit.

If your environment is not connected to the internet, or you don't want to use Azure AD, you can deploy Azure Stack by using Active Directory Federation Services (AD FS). The development kit includes its own AD FS and Active Directory Domain Services instances. If you deploy by using this option, you don't have to set up accounts ahead of time.

Notitie

If you deploy by using the AD FS option, you must redeploy Azure Stack to switch to Azure AD.

Azure Active Directory accounts

To deploy Azure Stack by using an Azure AD account, you must prepare an Azure AD account before you run the deployment PowerShell script. This account becomes the Global Admin for the Azure AD tenant. It's used to provision and delegate applications and service principals for all Azure Stack services that interact with Azure Active Directory and Graph API. It's also used as the owner of the default provider subscription (which you can later change). You can log in to your Azure Stack system’s administrator portal by using this account.

Save these credentials for use in step 6 of Deploy the development kit. This service administrator account can configure and manage resource clouds, user accounts, tenant plans, quotas, and pricing. In the portal, they can create website clouds, virtual machine private clouds, create plans, and manage user subscriptions.

Create at least one account so that you can sign in to the development kit as a tenant.

Azure Active Directory account

Supported?

Work or school account with valid Public Azure Subscription

Yes

Microsoft Account with valid Public Azure Subscription

Yes

Work or school account with valid China Azure Subscription

Yes

Work or school account with valid US Government Azure Subscription

Yes

Network

Switch

One available port on a switch for the development kit machine.

The development kit machine supports connecting to a switch access port or trunk port. No specialized features are required on the switch. If you are using a trunk port or if you need to configure a VLAN ID, you have to provide the VLAN ID as a deployment parameter. You can see examples in the list of deployment parameters.

Subnet

Do not connect the development kit machine to the following subnets:

192.168.200.0/24

192.168.100.0/27

192.168.101.0/26

192.168.102.0/24

192.168.103.0/25

192.168.104.0/25

These subnets are reserved for the internal networks within the development kit environment.

IPv4/IPv6

Only IPv4 is supported. You cannot create IPv6 networks.

DHCP

Make sure there is a DHCP server available on the network that the NIC connects to. If DHCP is not available, you must prepare an additional static IPv4 network besides the one used by host. You must provide that IP address and gateway as a deployment parameter. You can see examples in the list of deployment parameters.

Internet access

Azure Stack requires access to the Internet, either directly or through a transparent proxy. Azure Stack does not support the configuration of a web proxy to enable Internet access. Both the host IP and the new IP assigned to the MAS-BGPNAT01 (by DHCP or static IP) must be able to access Internet. Ports 80 and 443 are used under the graph.windows.net and login.microsoftonline.com domains.

Telemetry

Telemetry helps us shape future versions of Azure Stack. It lets us respond quickly to feedback, provide new features, and improve quality. Microsoft Azure Stack includes Windows Server 2016 and SQL Server 2014. Neither of these products are changed from default settings and both are described by the Microsoft Enterprise Privacy Statement. Azure Stack also contains open source software which has not been modified to send telemetry to Microsoft. Here are some examples of Azure Stack telemetry data:

Setting AllowTelemetry to 0 turns off telemetry for both Windows and Azure Stack deployment. Only critical security events from the operating system are sent. The setting controls Windows telemetry across all hosts and infrastructure VMs, and is reapplied to new nodes/VMs when scale-out operations occur.

Turn off telemetry on the infrastructure virtual machines (optional)

After the deployment is successful, run the following script in an elevated PowerShell window (as the AzureStack\AzureStackAdmin user) on the development kit host:

Usage reporting

Through registration, Azure Stack is also configured to forward usage information to Azure. Usage reporting is controlled independently from telemetry. You can turn off usage reporting when registering by using the script on Github. Just set the $reportUsage parameter to $false.

Usage data is formatted as detailed in the Report Azure Stack usage data to Azure. Azure Stack Development Kit users are not actually charged. This functionality is included in the development kit so that you can test to see how usage reporting works.